CES 2012: Sony Pulls “Crystal” Display Technology Out Of the Lab

For several years, Sony has pointed to its small, expensive, but definitely gorgeous OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) television displays as the future of television technology.

At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, it indeed seems that the OLED future has arrived, with 55-inch OLED televisions from Korean companies Samsung and LG drawing huge crowds. One place you won’t find an OLED television this year, however, is in the Sony booth.

Likely, Sony simply isn’t ready to produce 55-inch OLED TVs, and the smaller models of previous years would look a little silly with giant OLED models just down a couple of aisles.

Instead, the “future” section of Sony’s booth features a 55-inch prototype of a technology that it calls “Crystal”. A Sony representative explained that the technology uses “RGB LEDs”, that is, each pixel is made up of 3 individual LEDs—6 million all together, manufactured on a single substrate, that presses right up against the glass for maximum brightness. That’s about all the technical details he would give, and he was careful to point out that it is indeed just a technology at this point, one of several advanced technologies being explored for advanced displays, and, while Sony thinks it has more potential than OLED, it isn’t abandoning that technology.

But what exactly are “RGB LEDs?” Could they—and bear with my while I go out on a limb here—be quantum dot technology? Sony is one of several companies believed to have been working on this technology into displays—is Crystal the first demonstration?

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